1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material, and more particularly to a silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material improved on the photographic characteristics thereof; improved so as to have a high speed, excellent graininess in lower density areas of the image formed thereon, and wide exposure latitude.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In relation to the silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material (hereinafter referred to as the light-sensitive material), improvements on various characteristics have heretofore been demanded. Especially, the development of techniques for the light-sensitive material to increase its speed as well as to further improve its image quality (particularly in its graininess) because of the necessity to reduce the size of images to be recorded on the light-sensitive material, with the recent tendency toward miniaturization of camera sizes, has been in very strong demand in recent years. It is well-known that those methods using a monodisperse emulsion, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection (hereinafter referred to as Japanese Patent O.P.I. Publication) Nos. 28743/1983, 14829/1983 and 100847/1983, are the most effective techniques for improving the graininess. Such the methods, however, are disadvantageous in respect that they do not allow adequately wide exposure latitude to be ob- tained.
On the other hand, for improving the exposure latitude,
(1) a light-sensitive material composition in which the blue, green and red-sensitive silver halide emulsion layers each is comprised of a plurality of layers, e.g., two or three layers differing in the speed,
(2) a composition in which silver halide emulsion layers each contains at least two different monodisperse silver halide particles differing in the mean particle size, and
(3) the use in silver halide emulsion layers of several different monodisperse silver halide particles differing in the surface iodine composition according to the mean particle size, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Examined Publication No.4332/1983, are known. These methods, although they certainly improve the exposure latitude, cannot necessarily improve the graininess adequately because of the reciprocal relation between the exposure latitude and the graininess. Particularly, the improvement on the graininess in the minimum density range (fog+0.4 to fog+0.7) of the light-sensitive material, which determines the image quality, is so unsatisfactory that the graininess becomes conspicuous in a photographic print image when reproduced from the light-sensitive material.